In this instance our hero had hit upon a nest of temptations--first, he moistened the corner of his silk handkerchief from a flask of water he carried with him, to bathe the throbbing temples, and to wipe away the blood that had disfigured the pretty face. The wound was fortunately a very slight one, and a little treatment sufficed. Having done this, he hesitated a moment and gazed lovingly on the still, motionless features and form of the strange girl, and then, weak, susceptible, unworthy mortal that he was, he bowed his handsome face over her, until two pairs of handsome, well curved lips had met in a--stolen kiss. After this, he balanced a flask of brandy tenderly and carefully over the pale, set mouth, the even features puckered into an ugly grimace as the spirits moistened the tongue, then her bosom heaved with a great fretful sigh, and she raised the closed lids, slowly and tremblingly displaying to the expectant gaze of her attendant the loveliest pair of dark eyes he had ever seen. There was a great, vacant stare of stupid wonder for the first instant of returning consciousness, then Fifine, starting up as if from a nightmare, looked bewilderingly around her in a puzzled, dazed sort of way. "Are you better?" asked the deep, musical voice of the stranger so eagerly that Fifine realized at once that something must have gone wrong. She raised herself up with a great effort, and looked around in blank wonder. It is not hard to understand how she felt, she, who had never in all her life known what it is to receive the simplest act of courtesy from anyone, now opening her eyes in a lonely wood to find the strong arms of a handsome man supporting her carefully, and holding her head tenderly against his breast for repose. Unschooled though she was in the general items of conventionality, she yet had enough womanly instinct in her to form a perfectly correct calculation of her own, on the strange things that had just transpired. She felt, while she viewed her handsome hero with that first enquiring glance, that already they were something more than mere strangers to one another. What is there in a little stolen kiss to work such a wonderful change in one? How is it that, though perhaps unable to define everything clearly, a woman can always feel, always know when a man has tried his influence over her thus far?--for influence it certainly is, when a woman has given to the man she is capable of loving, permission to touch his lips to hers, she has at the same time bowed in voluntary slavery under his yoke forever. It is an experience that is never a past, and yet all that has happened before it becomes a blank in the heart, life dates anew from this circumstance, and "is never the same again." This was the nature of the sudden change that had come over our little heroine--the strange romanticism and novelty of the whole scene impressed her visibly.